Customer Reviews

The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Full disclosure: I haven't read that many books on the subject but have always tended to believe it was a setup of some kind involving the mob and someone else. Principal reasons being Ruby's killing Oswald, and the murders of prime Mob suspects in 1975 during the Congressional investigation.

Now the review:

This book is painstakingly researched. The accumulation of detail makes for a difficult read for a while. It could have used an editor in the early chapters. For example, the minor figure Irving Davidson is introduced three times by his full name with a brief biographic sentence.

Toward the end, it really picks up speed. The week of the assassination reads quite well and conveys many convincing details.

The author - who teaches at the Naval War College - has apparently picked up the work of certain investigators on the 1970's Congressional investigation and I imagine they provided some direction to his efforts. They are cited in the book from time to time. The data in this volume, however, is not a pure rehash. It includes some recently declassified CIA documents. The evidence is utterly circumstantial, and there is of course no smoking gun or the book would have a lot more publicity. Every once in a while the author's speculation went past my threshold of credulity. I think he fails to recognize the healthy possibility that in the hysteria of the aftermath of the assassination there were many people who, like Catholics who convince themselves of apparitions of the Blessed Mother, convinced themselves of having seen Oswald or Ruby or that they heard someone make a veiled reference to plans for the assassination.

Midway through the book, I was losing confidence in my own beliefs as it didn't seem the details were adding up to anything at all. The author speculates Oswald may have been a double agent for the CIA - his pro-Castro public persona is suggested to be a cover for an attempt by someone, presumably the CIA, to introduce him into Cuba to shoot Castro. I didn't find that all that compelling as there is no rational explanation how he then goes off and shoots JFK.

Still, the details that come from more reliable sources, like telephone records, and so forth, eventually become compelling. And once Oswald goes to Mexico to attempt to obtain a visa for Cuba, the story picks up some traction. Oswald comes off as a totally unstable person. As one mob figure is quoted years later, Oswald didn't know if he was working for a pro-Castro or an anti-Castro organization. And the book definitely convinces in relation to that. For a while, I was thinking to myself, this is proving the nutty lone gunman theory. Then I realized, just because the guy is a nut, doesn't mean he wasn't being used by somebody. And when you read about Ruby's and a few other low-level mob figures' actions around the day of the assassination, and that Oswald had an uncle in Marcello's crime family, it becomes hard to doubt that the somebody was the mob.

The thesis of the book is that Oswald was the instrument of a somewhat improvised alliance - conspiracy may be too organized - between anti-Castro Cubans, right-wing Americans down south, a couple of strange Europeans, and the Mafia. The contours of this alliance are unclear. Certain Mafia figures are named, particularly Marcello and Trafficante, but also the 1975 murder victims, Giancana, Hoffa and Roselli. One mob figure is specifically identified as having carried messages between two of those names, relative to the intent to kill JFK, but it is long before Dallas and there is no tie to Ruby or Oswald in the message. There is no one as notorious from the other groups tied as closely to the murder, although there are a couple of low-level anti-Castro names in Dallas near the relevant time and a couple gun dealers/runners as well. The motives for the murder are mixed: was it designed to provoke a US invasion of Cuba? Or was it just elimination of the Kennedys from the executive branch, to turn down the heat on the mob? Maybe both. The author lays them all out there but has little hard evidence of the motives.

Anyway, although most of the relevant witnesses are dead, and probably not a lot of documentary evidence remains unexamined, and so the full details will never be fully proved, I thank the author for doing a terrific job, for history's sake, of compiling what evidence there is of the forces that were likely behind Oswald.

Kaiser did a scholarly, though at times jumbled, job of tracing the development of the anti-Castro activity of the Mafia, Cuban exiles, and the CIA in the years immediately prior to November 22, 1963. This makes the book a worthwhile acquisition. It's a shame he sloughed over the assassination itself. He is blissfully unaware of the underlying physics issues of the best evidence. His work will remain frustratingly incomplete until these issues are addressed adequately.

I decided to take this book with me on a long 9 hour flight to Hawaii. Big mistake. I don't profess to be an expert but I have read at least 50 books on the assasination and this one ranks among those that were quite unsatisfying. My frustration stemmed from the author going page after page with good reserach and then seemingly summing up an assumed conclusion in a sentence or two, to which I'm saying to myself "that doesn't make any sense". In fact I'm not sure what exactly the point of the entire book is. He seems to imply that LH Oswald was the lone gunman but he didn't act alone.

From my perspective, he never persuades me on this point. In fact from the evidence set out in this book, one more likely would come to the conclusion that Oswald was being manipulaed by others to be "the patsy". No one who sets out to prove the "conspiracy but lone shooter scenerio" ever seems to ever have an answer for the question of why you would choose as your shooter...an unstable, unreliable poor shot...and arm him with a joke of a rifle. It simply does not make any sense.

This book is lopsided. Some highly questionable conclusions are just accepted wholesale without any discussion of contradictory evidence. Other parts about relations between the CIA and Mafia do provide fresh insight, but there attempts to put these insights into context seem arbitrary, and based on a fixed idea that the mob done it.
Unconvincing.

A much better book is James W. Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. This one is not only a game-changer; if enough people read it it could prove a world changer. This is the best answer yet, to
left-liberal critics at the Nation Magazine who argue that JFK was just another Cold Warrior. It ansers this critique so thoroughly because it meets it head onJFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

This book let me down. It is obvious the author spent considerable time researching the topic. He spends well over 100 pages detailing the CIA/MOB plots to take out Castro, something which has been generally known and accepted for 30 years or more. He evidences no curiosity about the many loose ends of the Warren Report. For example, he accepts at face value the 3 stories which cirulated in Dallas immediately after the assassination about Oswald: the rifle range story, the car salesman story and the furniture store story. Even the Warren Commission thought these were all cases of mistaken identity and that the real LHO was not a participant in any of those occurrences. The WC dismissed the stories. On the other hand, some researchers think the incidents happened, and since the evidence places LHO at other locations on those days, those researchers speculate that the person was an Oswald imposter. The author of this book swallows them whole. The only thing of real interest here, and which is barely mentioned in passing, is the speculation that a DPD detective, a good friend of Ruby's, was invovled in the LHO killing. Now THAT would make a good book.

If you are new to the conspiracy theories, this is not a good starting place. I was intrigued by browsing the introduction which is a compelling description of the Odio incident, which was unknown to me. The way this incident is presented is characteristic of this sprawling book. The incident and its participants are visited and revisited, scattering the incident's context and ramifications. Even the chapter devoted to "Odio" does not contain the full story.

There is a lot of extraneous information. For instance there is the incident of 3 men in a car with Texas plates braking into Judith Campbell's apartment. The car belonged to a former FBI agent and two intruders fit the description of his sons, one of whom was married to John Connolly's daughter. While this is interesting, it is never tied into anything else. It stays in my mind because Campbell and Connolly are known to me, but hundreds of other isolated incidents and not famous side players stream through this book. At first I thought I should be keeping track of them all.

I wondered where it was all going. Finally, the author stated his thesis on page 378. While, as he says, his thesis does not depend on the single bullet theory, typical of the book's organization, he immediately follows with a 10 page inconclusive analysis of the acoustical properties of the gun shots (i.e. elaborating on the theory on which his thesis does not depend).

I'm not going to re-read this book to see if the author proves his case. I guess, if I tried to reassemble it, I'd find that Frazier presented strong evidence linking Oswald to a host of anti-Castro people and groups, mixed evidence linking Oswald to the CIA and clear evidence linking Jack Ruby to the organized crime figures that had a strong interest in stopping the DOJ investigations led by Bobby Kennedy.

I think this book is for those who have a good background in the JFK assassination theories. The extensive notes in the end can help those who continue to persue the truth.

I began doing Kennedy Assassination research a few years back, and found that one of the things that helps me sort through all of the information is by reading others research. I was immediately a little off put with this book, since, for the most part, he started off by saying he was right and everyone else was wrong. If we have learned anything about the Kennedy assassination, its that no one is right and no one is wrong. Until anyone can prove anything definitively, its all theory.
One of the other things I really didn't like about the book was that it was so wishy-washy. In one sentence he would basically say that the evidence shows there is no way something could have happened, but in the next sentence, he would say that he thought the opposite. It was just a little confusing to read some many contradictions.
I can't say that I would recommend reading this book. There are a few good points that were made, but there were too many negatives for me to think this was a book worth reading.

This book is not an easy read - way too much info. Facts seem accurate but after reading many JFK history books, I was disappointed in this one.

The Author assumes Oswald is Guilty because he carried the Murder weapon(Manlicher Carcano) into the Depository yet offers no evidence for his claim.Frazer's unswerving testimony before the WC demonstrates that the package that Oswald was carrying was no more than 26inches in length yet CE-139 Manlicher when broken down is 34.8 inches. Frazier said Oswald carried the Heavy Package with one end in the palm of his hand and the other under his arm. for the package that Frazier saw to have contained CE-139 Even broken down would have required Oswald to have an arm length of over 36 inches!!it was simply too small to have contained The Manlicher Carcano!What did the WC Had to say about Frazier's Testimony they said he was probably Mistaken.also how is it that no depository employee testify seeing Oswald with any package in his hand of some 90 employees some one had to see him!According to The WC Oswald carried the Rifle Wrapped in a Brown Paper package up the 6th floor and set up the Snipers Nest unnoticed.!yet, no scratches,tears,not a single crease,gunpowder residue or any gun oil was found on the paper bag upon examination by the FBI.No Witness saw Oswald at the so called ''Snipers Nest'' window. only Mr.Brennan claimed he saw somebody that resembled Oswald yet could not make a positive identification!he changed his testimony so many times it look suspicious. in a court of law his testimony would have been thrown out!!

The book is good with respect to some of the mob/exile interactions. The section re the actual shooting is completely unreliable. It flies in the face of massive amounts of new information re the autopsey that belie a single shooter. It also ignores the evidence of eyewitnesses that Oswald was not on the 6th floor at the time of the shooting. It also makes almost no mention of the coup operation that the Kennedy administration planned for Cuba. That was pretty thoroughly detailed in ULTIMATE SACRIFICE, yet Mr. Kaiser fairly well ignores it. His contention that Rolando Cubela was the highest level official in the Castro gov't. that was in contact with the CIA directly contradicts ULTIMATE SACRIFICE, which book is far more convincing of CIA contacts with Juan Almeida-Bosque. Almeida was infinitely higher in the Cuban gov't. than Cubela ever was. And on and on. Kaiser's book is interesting, but it isn't a primer on the assassination. Read ULTIMATE SACRIFICE (Waldron/Hartman) and SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TALKED (Hancock), then read this.